Dead Ends (Main Street Mysteries Book 2)

by Sandra Balzo

  ‘Hello?’ James Duende's dark-haired head appeared around the stair banister.

  ‘Just me,’ AnnaLise said, setting her handbag down on the hall table next to a rust-colored potted mum plant. ‘Sorry to bother you, especially if you're working, but I was looking for Joy.’

  ‘I haven't seen her or Sheree, for that matter, but I've been tied to my computer screen all morning.’ Duende came down the steps. He was wearing jeans and a blue dress shirt, the sleeves of which he rolled down to his wrists as he descended. ‘In fact, I was just going to break for lunch. Care to join me?’

  ‘Thanks,’ AnnaLise said, thinking how he looked every inch the writer, holed away in Room 13 of a country inn. ‘But I had a late breakfast.’

  ‘At Mama Philomena's, presumably,’ Duende said, buttoning the cuffs of the shirt as he covered the last few steps. ‘You and I should move in there.’

  The smile he gave her would have been enticing, if Room 13 – the room directly above Sutherton Inn's dining room – wasn't the one Sheree reserved for eligible males she was interested in herself.

  ‘What can I say?’ she'd said, when AnnaLise had noticed the trend. ‘Thirteen's my lucky number. Besides, with the exception of breakfast, there's no one to disturb below.’ A wink. ‘These antique beds do squeak a bit.’

  How ‘lucky’ Sheree had gotten with James, AnnaLise didn't know. And didn't necessarily want to know.

  ‘I was practically brought up at Mama's,’ AnnaLise said now to James. ‘And I'm sure it's convenient for you, since there are no other restaurants within walking distance, except for Sal's Tap on the beach across the way.’

  ‘Which is where I'm headed, I think,’ Duende said, continuing to where she was standing in the front hall. ‘Sure I can't treat you to a greasy burger with matching fried onions and jalapenos?’

  ‘As enticing as that sounds, I'll have to take a rain check.’ Stepping back so he could get to the door, AnnaLise bumped into the bow-front foyer table. The mum tipped, spilling dirt, and as she tried to prevent further damage, AnnaLise managed to sweep her handbag to the floor.

  Duende bent down to retrieve the purse and set it on the table before he said, ‘Can I hold you to that?’

  AnnaLise, at barely five foot, had to look up over twelve inches to meet his brown eyes, which at this close distance she could see were flecked with gold.

  ‘To what?’ she asked as the door behind Duende opened.

  The eyes sparkled, but he didn't step back. ‘The greasy lunch.'

  ‘Sounds delightful,’ Sheree's voice said, though AnnaLise couldn't see even the statuesque blonde beyond Duende's solid frame. ‘Was that an invitation?’

  ‘Well, there you are,’ AnnaLise said, sweeping the spilled soil from the plant into her hand and stuffing it into her jeans pocket, before popping out from behind Duende. ‘I was looking for you.’

  ‘Oh, I bet you were.’ There was a predatory look on Sheree's face as she glanced between them. AnnaLise would have taken it personally, if it hadn't been Sheree's modus operandi whenever a prospective male target was in the room.

  An M.O. since AnnaLise and she were in the ninth grade and Chuck Greystone was the male in the triangle. Chuck had chosen AnnaLise back then, probably because super-sexed Sheree had scared the shit out of him.

  ‘If you two want to go to lunch, it's fine.' AnnaLise was signaling surrender before the battle – even if only in Sheree's mind – could begin. ‘I was actually looking for Joy.’

  ‘She's probably up at the spa,’ Sheree said. ‘I know she left before I did.’

  ‘I didn't hear her come back,’ Duende said. ‘Though I like to put instrumental music on when I write, so I may have missed her.’

  ‘I'll go up and knock on her door. If she's not there, I can always leave her a note to call me,’ AnnaLise said.

  ‘Good plan,’ Sheree said, then turned to Duende. ‘And we're going to lunch?’

  ‘Sure, but I've got a hankering for Sal's,’ Duende said. ‘Take it or leave it.’

  ‘I'll take it.’ Sheree linked her arm with his to usher him out the door.

  ‘You sure you won't come, AnnaLise?’ Duende asked, turning at the threshold.

  ‘I am, but thank you.’

  As the door closed behind them, AnnaLise mounted the steps toward the business at hand: finding Joy.

  Passing by twelve, eleven and ten, AnnaLise tapped on the door of room nine. No answer, but by this time she'd expected that. Digging out a pad from her purse she scribbled: Joy, call me – it's important. AnnaLise and her number. Then she slid the paper under the door and started back down the hall.

  As AnnaLise reached the top of the stairs, she heard the front door open and voices in the foyer. Sheree hadn't locked the door, but given that guests who were staying more than one night would need to come and go, that wasn't unusual. The only other guests that AnnaLise knew of besides James Duende and Joy Tamarack, though, were the Rosewoods.

  She froze, not sure why.

  ‘I'd just appreciate it if you'd stay here with me.’ Ben's voice, though not the way AnnaLise was used to hearing it. He sounded vulnerable. ‘Instead of going back to the dorm or going out with this Josh.’

  ‘Joshua,’ Suzanne corrected, sounding like a snotty eight-year-old. ‘And why should I stay? You'll just be on the phone. Or your computer.’

  ‘You're a fine one to . . .’ her father started, then seemed to catch himself. ‘You're right. I'll have to make a lot of calls, notifying . . .’ He let that trail off, too.

  ‘I'm sorry, Dad.’ The sound of a hug, if a hug can make a sound. ‘How about I come back in time for dinner?’

  ‘That would be good, Suze. I should be done with my calls by then and we can talk.’

  Even without seeing him, AnnaLise could imagine Ben's expression. Warm. Endearing, even. Worked wonders with juries. Hell, it had worked wonders on her, too.

  ‘Do you need a ride?’ he continued.

  ‘Joshua's picking me – ’ She stopped. Then, ‘I . . . I almost started to make up a story about Joshua picking me up by the lake in his father's car, because I knew Mom would hate my being seen in his truck.’

  ‘You forgot your mother is dead,’ her father said. ‘That's not unusual, Suze. And it's certainly not anything to be ashamed of. It's going to take . . .’

  An embarrassed laugh. ‘Time, I know. Listen,’ a sniff, ‘I better go or Joshua will be worried.’

  The sound of the inn's front door opening and then closing.

  Decision time, AnnaLise thought, stepping down onto the first step and hesitating. Should she take the opportunity of Suzanne's absence to talk to Ben and offer her condolences? Still intimate or not, the two had known each other for five years now and AnnaLise wished him only well. If she could undo the whole thing . . .

  Too late, she heard the door creak open again and a voice say, ‘Need my jacket,’ followed by the pounding of teenaged feet on the steps.

  Eleven

  AnnaLise retreated a step, but Suzanne Rosewood just brushed by, continuing on to a room beyond Joy's and returning seconds later with the forgotten jacket. Suzanne pounded back down the stairs, ignoring AnnaLise and apparently Ben as well, as she exited the inn, slamming the door behind her.

  Slowly, AnnaLise descended the steps one-by-one, only to see the district attorney standing in the arch from the foyer, her open handbag in his hand. ‘Ahh, I thought this was yours, AnnaLise. It's really not a good idea to leave valuables in the front hall, where anybody outside could see them through a window.’

  AnnaLise took her handbag from Ben, not bothering to remind him that this was Sutherton, North Carolina, not Urban County, Wisconsin, and that she had a better idea of what was ‘a good idea’ around here than he did. ‘I'm sorry about Tanja, Ben. Do you want to sit and talk?’

  The DA nodded and they moved into the parlor, where the bright yellow walls and whitewashed woodwork were in direct contrast to the mood in the air. AnnaLise took a cherry- red over
stuffed chair while Ben chose the floral couch perpendicular to it.

  The sheer force of the district attorney's personality usually made him look taller and broader than his five-eleven and 175 pounds. Now, though, he settled onto the couch elbows on knees, forehead in hands, his trademark longish, sandy-brown hair making him look more like a little boy who'd lost the family puppy.

  This was the Benjamin Rosewood that AnnaLise had fallen in love with. The private one, and it was all she could do to stay in her chair and not go to him.

  But stay she did. ‘Suze . . . I'm sorry that she saw me. I'm afraid she thinks I was meeting you here.’

  Ben ratcheted up his head, his blue eyes seeming confused. ‘You mean an assignation? Why would she believe that?’

  AnnaLise wanted to slap herself. The man had lost his wife and obviously was having trouble with his daughter and yet, to AnnaLise, this – like everything else in life – was all about her. ‘I just . . . I just assumed Suze knew about us.’

  ‘I don't believe so. Why would you think that?’

  AnnaLise was surprised he could be so obtuse. ‘When I saw Suzanne this morning and told her how sorry I was about her mother, she said something like “I bet you are.” Not to mention just now, when she ignored me and slammed the door on the way out.’

  ‘She's a teenager.’ Ben shrugged. ‘Sometimes you just have to forgive them for their youth.’

  This from the same man who charged somebody else's teenager with vehicular manslaughter.

  ‘So you didn't tell Tanja about the affair?’

  ‘No.’ Ben stood. ‘Why? Did she find out?’

  Before AnnaLise could answer – not that she had an answer – he started to pace. ‘Are you telling me that my wife died thinking I'd been unfaithful to her?’

  AnnaLise glanced toward the parlor door. ‘Ben, you were unfaithful to her. We,’ she pointed back and forth between the two of them, ‘cheated on Tanja.’

  ‘But you and I were over,’ Ben said. ‘There was no reason for her to know now.’

  ‘I didn't tell her,’ AnnaLise protested. ‘I thought maybe you did, when she made that pointed remark in the restaurant yesterday morning about not liking to share. I assumed Tanja meant you.’

  ‘Ohh,’ Ben sat back down on the couch. ‘She did, actually. But it was more of a warning-off than an accusation.’

  ‘Like . . .’ AnnaLise was looking for a more diplomatic way of putting it, but settled on, ‘. . . marking her territory?’

  ‘Exactly.’ Ben projected that pleased-teacher look. ‘You should be flattered – Tanja only does it to women she views as real competition.’

  ‘Flattered,’ didn't quite describe it, but AnnaLise was relieved. She also noticed the use of present tense. ‘I'm really sorry about the crash. I think that,’ she looked down at her hands, which she seemed to be wringing, ‘that, despite everything you've said, you loved Tanja.’

  ‘I did. Still do. And always will.’ The rule of threes.

  AnnaLise cleared her throat. ‘I was surprised to see you up here yesterday.’

  A rueful grin from Ben. ‘Well, then I got what I planned, I guess.’

  ‘I don't understand.’

  ‘What I said about putting the university on Suze's list was true. Because of the glowing way you'd spoken about the area. Though Katie, of course, wasn't the conduit of those sentiments.’

  Conduit. Another reason the journalist had fallen for the lawyer: His large – and apropos – active vocabulary.

  ‘Really?’ AnnaLise leaned forward. ‘I hadn't been home for five years. And, besides, I'd run, not walked, from Sutherton in the first place. What could I have said that was so “glowing”?’

  ‘It wasn't your words, per se.’ Ben extended his hand toward her. ‘It was that you glowed. Anytime you talked about this area.’

  They both looked at the hand stretched out between them. Then, simultaneously, they stepped away from the abyss – she retreating into her chair, and he retracting his hand.

  AnnaLise said, ‘You didn't mention Suzanne had applied or been accepted.’

  Another grin, this one more sheepish than rueful. ‘I thought I'd surprise you.’

  ‘Well, that certainly is accurate.’

  ‘I know. And I'm sorry about it, but you handled the situation deftly.’

  Deftly. ‘You trained me well.’

  Ben laughed. ‘This is sounding like the airport scene from Casablanca.' This time he did reach over, chucking her chin.

  ‘You know, the "here's looking" line wasn't scripted,’ AnnaLise said. ‘Bogart – ’

  ‘Yes, Movie-maven,’ said Ben, rolling his eyes. ‘Bogart ad-libbed it based on something he'd said to Bergman while he was teaching her poker between takes. You told me.’

  AnnaLise just smiled. Feature films remained the one thing she knew more about than he did.

  Ben sighed. ‘I miss you, AnnaLise. Miss just talking to you. I know we're over, and that's for the best, especially given . . .’

  The enormity of what had happened seemed to wash over him and he closed his eyes. When they reopened, tears brimmed in them. ‘I . . .’ Ben cleared his throat, ‘I have to pay a lot of attention to Suzanne now, try to repair our relationship. I've been an absentee father, and not even a very good one of those.’

  ‘I know,’ AnnaLise said, and she did. Not only how little Ben had been there for his daughter, but how it felt not to have a dad. ‘If there's anything I can do – or my mother, or Mama or any of our friends, assuming Suzanne plans to stay in school at U-Mo.’

  ‘She want to, given the young . . . beau.’

  Beau. Lovely. ‘Joshua Eames. From what I've seen, he's grown into a pretty good guy. Got into some trouble when he was younger, but his mom had abandoned him, and the father – ’

  ‘Birds of a feather,’ Ben said, musingly. ‘No wonder he and Suze are drawn to each other. His mother left him and I wasn't around for her. And now with Tanja gone, they'll have even more in common.’

  It was true, though AnnaLise hadn't thought along those lines.

  Yet another aspect at which Benjamin Rosewood excelled: empathy, knowing instinctively how other people felt.

  But whether that ‘empathy’ translated into ‘sympathy,’ she wasn't as sure.

  Twelve

  The parameters of the district attorney's tolerance were about to be tested.

  Ben had followed AnnaLise to the foyer and as she prepared to leave, the front door of the inn opened.

  ‘Joy!’ AnnaLise said. ‘I've been looking for you.’

  Joy Tamarack was wiry, with spiky, nearly white blonde hair. A tiny bundle of restless energy and contradictions, she weighed maybe a hundred pounds – all of it muscle – and, despite being a physical trainer, smoked like the proverbial chimney.

  Less than a year after marrying Dickens Hart, she'd found her groom – direct quote – ‘helping himself to a little tail.’ In other words, one of the White Tail Club's ‘fawns.’ Joy may have been young herself, but she was also a shrewd business woman even then. She'd promptly divorced Hart, coming away with a very nice settlement. So nice, in fact, that the speculation was that Hart's ‘little tail’ had been very little.

  As in under-aged.

  Yet another reason AnnaLise was unwilling to recognize her own parentage on the paternal side.

  As for Joy, while she'd maintained business interests in Sutherton thanks to her divorce settlement, she'd moved away to manage an Indiana fitness club. Each year though, the fitness trainer would return for a girls' weekend, where she and a dozen of her sorority sisters – another direct quote – engaged in ‘drinking, smoking and aural, that's a-u-r-a-l, sex. Meaning we listen to each other lie about it.'

  At the most recent ‘Frat Pack,’ as the group called the reunion, Joy had announced she planned to return to Sutherton full-time.

  AnnaLise wondered whether her friend might want to reconsider that, should District Attorney Rosewood stay true to his stripes.

&
nbsp; The least AnnaLise could do was to get the two off on the right foot and make it very clear to Ben that Joy was a friend of hers. And clear to Joy that Ben should be taken seriously.

  ‘Joy Tamarack,’ AnnaLise said, ‘this is Ben Rosewood, the district attorney of Urban County, where I live now. Ben, Joy is a very good, long-time friend of mine.’

  Ben shook Joy's hand. ‘You're the owner of the spa that served my wife alcohol before sending her careering down the mountainside.’

  So much for hoping things would go well.

  Though AnnaLise couldn't help mentally applauding his use of the word ‘career,’ as in the verb meaning rushing onward while lurching or swaying, as opposed to the more common ‘careening,’ which meant just swaying or swerving while moving.

  But, perhaps, a distinction without a difference, especially under the circumstances.

  Mouth open, Joy looked at AnnaLise and then back to her accuser, and promptly broke into tears.

  ‘What in the world is wrong with you?’ AnnaLise said to Ben as Joy dashed away and up the stairs.

  ‘What's wrong with me?’ he asked. ‘Maybe you should ask your “very good, long-time” friend that.’

  ‘Your wife is dead not even a day and you're already considering litigation?’ AnnaLise said. ‘I ask, again, what is wrong with you?’

  ‘Absolutely nothing,’ Ben said, running a hand through his hair. ‘My wife is dead and someone has to pay.’

  ‘She paid,’ AnnaLise said, almost unconsciously falling into debate mode with him. ‘I mean, Tanja did. She had some wine, took our mountain roads too fast and died as a result, sadly. Case closed.’

  Early in their relationship the debating had been a game they played – almost their version of pillow talk. Back then, the district attorney seemed gratified and even proud that the feisty little reporter had the guts to stand up to him. He had even said AnnaLise would have made a good lawyer. Now, apparently, he was not so entranced.

  ‘A case is not “closed,”’ Ben said through his teeth, ‘until I say it is.’

  Wonderful. AnnaLise had wanted to help, but probably had only managed to make things worse for Joy.